Spring 2021 Adult Titles
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Welcome to our second digital bookfair rights guide. This Spring we have taken a different approach to our rights guide format. As you will see, this document provides elevator pitches for our exciting forthcoming projects, with individual links to our Rights Portal where the publication and agenting information is detailed. To navigate this document, please click on the (pink) hyperlinks throughout to see more information on the Rights Portal. If you wish to skip ahead to a specific sub-genre within our guide, please click that line on the contents table overleaf. We greatly look forward to hearing from you or meeting with you, and you can email us via the below links too with any queries. Our best wishes – the DHA Adult Rights Team.
You can also explore the following curations on our Rights Portal:
Spring 2021 Highlights
International Bestsellers
Recent Publications
Film and TV News
Translation Rights Contact Details
Alice Howe: France; Germany [email protected]
Margaux Vialleron: Denmark; Finland; Iceland; Italy, the Netherlands; Norway; Sweden [email protected]
Bethany Wood: Brazil; Poland; Portugal; Spain and Latin America; all translation territories for DHA Estates [email protected]
Lucy Talbot: China; Croatia; Estonia; Hungary; Japan; Korea; Latvia; Lithuania; Russia; Slovenia; Russia; Taiwan; Turkey; Ukraine [email protected]
Imogen Bovill: Arabic; Albania; Bulgaria; Czech Republic; Greece; Indonesia; Israel; Macedonia; Romania; Serbia; Slovakia; Thailand; Vietnam, all other markets [email protected]
Translation rights enquiries: Sam Norman [email protected]
Meet the team
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Contents Fiction Commercial Fiction 4 Crime & Thriller, Suspense and Fantasy 5 Upmarket Fiction 7 Literary Fiction 8 Non-Fiction Biography & Memoir 9 Current Affairs & Economics 10 Essays 11 History 12 Science 12
Recent Publications 13 Film and TV News 16
Co-Agents 17
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Commercial Fiction Lauren Bravo – Preloved Meet sweet, sardonic and socially awkward Gwen Grundle in this compelling and witty debut. When Gwen finds herself at a crossroads in life, working at a charity shop seems a good place to course-correct her journey. Preloved is brimming with life, love and stories bound up in even the most everyday items. UK Rights: Molly Crawford, Simon & Schuster (Spring 2023) Rights portal page
Lucy Dillon – The First Day of the Rest of My Life Tara has always been good at helping others, and now that the floods that rocked her town have passed, she sees that her own defences are washed away. When her father walks back into her life Tara is forced to question her past and to plan a new future. UK Rights: Francesca Best, Transworld (October 2021) Rights portal page
Jessica George – Maddie Wright’s Mid-Twenties A powerful coming-of-age story that explores grief, familial duty, mental health, adulthood and friendship, combining Candice Carty-Williams’s exploration of being young, black and British with the smart humour of Lucy Vine. UK Rights: On Submission (manuscript) Rights portal page
Milly Johnson – The Woman In The Middle Shay is so worried about her son, her daughter, her husband, her Mum, her dad, her best friend Paula and her dead best friend Trine, she has forgotten to worry about herself! This is the tender and dramatic coming-back-to-life story of a busy woman who needs to find herself again. UK Rights: Clare Hey, Simon & Schuster (October 2021) Rights portal page
Sarah Mitchell – A Thousand Winters Berlin, 1989: Tiffany travels to East Berlin, and witnesses the wall coming down. Norfolk, 1946: working at a prisoner of war camp, Fran falls for a charming German prisoner, Thomas, whose path she seems to keep crossing. For fans of Fiona Valpy and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. WEL Rights: Cara Chimirri, Bookouture (June 2021) Rights portal page
Linda O’Sullivan – The Lives We Dream Of A compelling commercial debut exploring themes of love, guilt and global responsibility. On the Mediterranean Sea, Rahma risks her life on an overcrowded boat; nearby Laney and Ed celebrate their engagement. When their fates collide, choices will be made and lives changed forever. UK Rights: On Submission Rights portal page
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Crime & Thriller, Suspense and Fantasy Rob Burnett – Thin Ice Chilling in every sense of the word, Thin Ice is the story of one woman’s survival against the odds and the bitter conditions of winter in the Antarctic. This smart, fast- paced, intensely psychological thriller is perfect for fans of The Martian and Michelle Paver. UK Rights: On Submission (manuscript) Rights portal page
Theo Clare – The Book of Sand (The Cirque Cycle #1) A disparate group of people find themselves bound together in a surreal and dangerous world, tasked with solving a riddle to find an unknown object which will be their salvation. The Book of Sand is the first novel in an epic series created by one of the finest and most inventive storytellers working in the UK today. UK Rights: Selina Walker, Del Rey (January 2022); US Rights: On Submission Rights portal page
Michelle Davies – The Death of Me Isaac Naylor took his life after a teenage fan was found in a hotel room - and the world thought it had lost one of the greatest rock stars of a generation. That is, until journalist Natalie Glass begins to think otherwise… UK Rights: Francesca Pathak, Orion (September 2021) Rights portal page
Roxie Key – Burn Again Burn Again is the story of two women, Evie and Anya, and the two types of people they represent: those who can only watch as their world burns down around them and those who run right back into the fire. Combining the expert plotting of the best crime writers with the emotional intensity of a psychological thriller, Burn Again will appeal to readers of Clare Mackintosh and Jane Casey. UK Rights: On Submission (manuscript) Rights portal page
Simon Mason – A Killing in November Below the dreaming spires of Barnabas Hall, education takes a back seat to securing funding from the unprincipled rich. In this exciting new series from the Betty Trask and Crimefest award-winning author, we follow Inspector Ryan Wilkins as he investigates a suspicious death in an Oxford college. Irreverent and propulsive, A Killing in November is perfect for fans of Mick Herron and Colin Dexter. UK Rights: Jon Riley, Quercus (Spring 2022) Rights portal page
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Val McDermid – 1979 (Allie Burns #1) The anticipated launch of a new historical crime quintet by the ‘Queen of Crime’ McDermid, following investigative reporter Allie Burns from her debut at a Glasgow news desk and over 41 years. UK Rights: Lucy Malagoni, Little, Brown; US Rights: Amy Hundley, Grove/Atlantic (August 2021) Rights portal page
Sarah Pinborough – Insomnia When family lawyer Emma Averill stops sleeping, her hard-won dream life turns into a nightmare. Is someone maliciously out to destroy her, or is it all in her head? Can the answer be hidden in her insomnia? Asks master of plot twist Pinborough with her latest feverish, suspense novel. UK Rights: Natasha Bardon, Harpercollins; US Rights: David Highfill, Harpercollins (March 2022) Rights portal page
Catherine Ryan Howard – 56 Days Ciara meets Oliver in a supermarket queue. 56 days later, detectives arrive at Oliver’s apartment to discover a decomposing body. The ultimate lockdown thriller, plotted by the award-winning author of contemporary and high-concept crime fiction. UK Rights: Sarah Hodgson, Corvus; US Rights: Haila Williams, Blackstone (August 2021) Rights portal page
Tasha Silva – The Guest Room During a blistering hot summer in London, Tess rents her now dead sister’s room to handsome Arran. Be careful what you look for in this unsettling and twisty game of cat and mouse: The Guest Room is a compulsive psychological thriller for fans of You and The Girl on the Train. UK Rights: On Submission (manuscript) Rights portal page
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Upmarket Fiction Tish Delaney – All The Tears I Ever Cried A family long-ruled over by a bullying patriarch find the courage to stand up to him. Lindy is a grown woman who hasn’t even started to live her life yet, although she is desperate to love and be loved. When the man who is Lindy’s greatest loss and darkest secret returns, can he even start to return the love she has for him? UK Rights: Charlotte Cray, Hutchinson (2022) Rights portal page
Araminta Hall – Broken Water A chillingly dark psychological novel played out in the claustrophobic wood-panelled cabins and surreally grand dining-rooms and libraries of an ocean liner as it makes its voyage. Hall artfully combines the isolation and psychological unknowing of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca with the locked room mystery and chilling suspense of Ruth Ware’s The Woman in Cabin 10. UK Rights: Francesca Pathak, Orion (January 2022); US Rights: On Submission Rights portal page
Alexander McCall Smith – The Man With The Silver Saab (Ulf Varg #3) The newest instalment in the genre-bending ‘Scandi blanc’ cosy crime series. We follow Detective Ulf Varg and his unlikely team in the Malmo police’s Department of Sensitive Crimes as they are tasked with solving bizarre and unurgent happenings about town… UK Rights: Richard Beswick, Little, Brown; US and Canadian Rights: Knopf (May 2021) Rights portal page
Minette Walters – The Swift And The Harrier From the award-winning, bestselling Minette Walters comes a breath-taking love story featuring the life of young physician Jayne Swift and set against the backdrop of the English Civil War. Perfect for fans of Philippa Gregory and Kate Mosse. UK Rights: Sarah Hodgson, Allen & Unwin; US Rights: On Submission Rights portal page
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Literary Fiction Jacqueline Crooks – Fire Rush An explosive and lyrical debut novel about love, loss, music and revolution. Fire Rush is set across the late 1970s and early 1980s Britain and Jamaica, and portrays a young woman who comes into her power and explores her past through music and testimony. UK Rights: Ana Fletcher, Jonathan Cape; US Rights: Lindsey Schwoeri, Viking (June 2022) Rights portal page
Penelope Lively – Metamorphosis The definitive selection of short stories from one of our greatest living writers. Curated by Penelope Lively herself, this collection showcases wry compassion and glitters with wit across new and forgotten treasures. UK Rights: Helen Garnons-Williams, Fig Tree (October 2021) Rights portal page
Jean McNeil – Day For Night In an unflinching exploration of love and boundaries, a power couple of the independent cinema world embark on a biopic of Walter Benjamin during the final year of Britain’s membership of the European Union. WEL Rights: Susan Renouf, ECW Press (June 2021) Rights portal page
Charlotte Morgan-Nwokenna – The Tricksters The Bell Jar meets Baldwin, this is a coming-of-age story detailing the interior life and psychological breakdown of African-American playwright Elsie Roxborough, and a racial polemic that melds the personal and the political. UK Rights: On Submission (manuscript) Rights portal page
Benjamin Myers – The Perfect Golden Circle A poetic and gentle literary novel set in a field and under the cover of night. Two men, modern outlaws, make crop circles, mandalas in the wheat, to try and change the heart of things during one long hot English summer. UK Rights: Paul Baggaley with Allegra le Fanu, Bloomsbury (Spring 2022); US Rights: Carl Bromley, Melville House Rights portal page
Aisling Watters – Mrs Cassidy A compelling portrait of a woman whose seemingly idyllic life is, in reality, a deeply unsettling and suffocating marriage. UK Rights: On Submission (manuscript) Rights portal page
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Biography & Memoir Sarfraz Manzoor – They Personal, controversial and enduringly hopeful, They offers a fresh vision of how to build a more united kingdom, as journalist and broadcaster Manzoor talks with those whose voices are rarely heard and tackles many of the most pressing issues of our age. UK Rights: Alex Clarke, Wildfire / Headline (August 2021) Rights portal page
Jini Reddy – The Seven Coloured Earth Pitts’ Afropean meets Akala’s Natives, Jini Reddy opens an accessible and empathetic conversation about identity, belonging and connection in this cross-cultural age and for anyone who inhabits ‘in-between places’. UK Rights: On Submission (proposal and sample chapter) Rights portal page
Jack Underwood – Not Even This A book-length lyric essay from one of our finest contemporary poets about poetry, parenthood and living uncertainly. UK Rights: Sarah Castleton, Little, Brown (May 2021) Rights portal page
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Current Affairs & Economics Dennis Grube – Ducks In A Row A lively and entertaining new insight into the four elements or ‘ducks’ that governments must get to align if a new policy is to have a chance of success. UK Rights: On Submission – proposal Rights portal page
Ed Miliband – Go Big Think of any problem that we face and there is already a solution out there. We just need to know where to look, explains Labour MP and co-host of the popular Reasons to be Cheerful podcast Ed Miliband – and have the courage to think BIG. UK Rights: Will Hammond, Bodley Head (June 2021) Rights portal page
Rupert Russell – Price Wars A radical re-assessment of the causes of chaos in our age, based on cutting-edge economics and social science, and the result of Russell’s travels across five continents, chasing the butterfly effect that led to chaos: commodity prices. Price Wars is also a documentary feature film. UK Rights: Jenny Lord, Weidenfeld & Nicolson; US Rights: Kris Puopolo, Doubleday (January 2022) Rights portal page
Peter Stott – Hot Air From one of the world’s leading climate scientists, comes the reference and behind- the-scenes story of the battle against climate change. The result of over two decades of establishing evidence for human influence on climate, Hot Air recounts the twists and turns of our planet’s ticking clock against climate disasters. UK Rights: Mike Harpley, Corvus/Atlantic (October 2021) Rights portal page
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Essays Stephen Fry – Fry’s Ties Fry brings his unique wisdom and humour to bear in this beautifully illustrated and photographed collection of ties as talismans. A witty, illustrated ode to Fry's decades-long obsession with a man's most trusted accessory: the tie. UK Rights: Jillian Taylor, Michael Joseph (Summer 2021) Rights portal page
Kathryn Mannix – Listen An invitation to listen and to learn to talk about the big things, about life and death, by a pioneer in the field of palliative medicine and author of Sunday Times bestseller With the End in Mind, Kathryn Mannix. UK Rights: Arabella Pike, HarperCollins (September 2021) Rights portal page
Kate Zambreno – To Write As If Already Dead In a not-quite study of Hervé Guibert’s À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie, Zambreno adopts Guibert’s methods to explore what it means to be an author through the anxieties of the internet age, the ethics of friendship, and “the facts of the body”: illness, pregnancy, and death. WEL Rights: Philip Leventhal, Columbia University Press (June 2021) Rights portal page
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History
Rebecca Birrell – This Dark Country A vibrant and poignant group portrait which explores the lives of six pioneering women artists, offering a new perspective on intimacy, interior space, gendered experience and art. Through attention to the minor details – the oranges, sparsely furnished rooms, saucepans and lilies – Birrell makes a moving argument for redefining their domestic and creative practices. UK Rights: Michael Fishwick, Bloomsbury (August 2021) Rights portal page
Sam Wetherell – Obsolete Forensic and angry, a brilliant and searing anatomisation of post-industrial decline by a bright young historian. Wetherell asks the crucial question: what do cities like Liverpool do when their raison d’être ceases to exist? UK Rights: On Submission (proposal) Rights portal page
Jon Wilson – Out of Chaos Brilliantly blending big-sweep history with fascinating human stories, Professor Jon Wilson offers a provocative and eye-opening global perspective on the relationship between people and state. A global history of the heyday of the nation state, from 1920 to 2000. UK Rights: On Submission (proposal) Rights portal page
Science Charles Foster – Being A Human What kind of creature is a human? Charles Foster sets out to experience the world at three pivotal moments in our human history in this radical, visceral work of philosophical enquiry from the bestselling author of Being A Beast. UK Rights: Ed Lake, Profile; US Rights: Riva Hocherman, Metropolitan (August 2021) Rights portal page
John Gribbin – Eight Improbable Possibilities A mind-bending guide to some of the unlikeliest discoveries and most improbable truths of science, from the master of popular science writing. UK Rights: Duncan Heath, Icon Books (October 2021) Rights portal page
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Recent Publications
January 2021 Belinda Bauer Joss Stirling Exit Jess Bridges series
February 2021 Lucy Diamond Rachel Abbott Judith Bryan Tish Delaney The Promise Close Your Eyes Bernard And The Cloth Before My Actual Heart Monkey Breaks
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March 2021 Peter May Robbie Morrison Megan Nolan Alan Judd The Night Gate The Edge Of The Grave Acts of Desperation A Fine Madness
Eric Hobsbawm On Nationalism
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April 2021 Sarah Bernstein Neil Ansell Jay Griffiths The Coming Bad Days The Circling Sky Why Rebel
May 2021 Kei Miller Jane Rogoyska Things I Have Withheld Surviving Katyn
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Film and TV News
Bernard Cornwell - The Last Kingdom Season 5 of The Last Kingdom confirmed by Netflix
Alicia Drake - I Love You Too Much Writer & director attached to a feature film adaptation (details embargoed)
Araminta Hall - Imperfect Women Optioned for TV by Elisabeth Moss’ production company Love & Squalor and set to star Elisabeth Moss
James Herbert - The Shrine Produced by Sony, feature film written & directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos and starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan wrapped shooting in October 2020
Peter May - The Killing Room Feature film wrapped shooting in South Korea & France, produced by The French Connection in development with Korean-based Dream Capture Studios
Kei Miller - Augustown Under option with Rathaus Films and Potboiler Productions, with Steve McQueen and BBC Films to executive produce. Shabier Kirschner (Small Axe) attached to direct and Courttia Newland (Small Axe) to write
Sarah Pinborough - Behind Her Eyes Released worldwide on Netflix as a limited series on 17th February 2021
Sarah Vaughan - Little Disasters Under option for TV with Roughcut TV
Sarah Vaughan - Anatomy Of A Scandal Being produced as a 6-part series by Netflix, expected in 2021 and starring Sienna Miller, Michelle Dockery and Rupert Friend. David E Kelley adapted (The Undoing, Big Little Lies)
Minette Walters - Last Hours Optioned for TV (details embargoed)
Holly Watt - the Casey Benedict series (first two titles) Optioned for screen by Character 7 (Spooks, The Night Manager, The Undoing) 16
Co-Agents
China, Taiwan: Andrew Nurnberg Associates / Bardon Chinese Media Agency
Czech, Slovak: Kristin Olson Literarni Agentura
Hungary: Katai & Bolza
Indonesia: Maxima Creative Agency
Japan: Tuttle-Mori / Japan Uni
Korea: Eric Yang Agency
Poland: Anna Jarota Agency
Romania: Simona Kessler Agency
Russia, Ukraine: Van Lear Agency
Serbia: Plima Literary Agency
Thailand: The Silkroad Agency
Turkey: Anatolia Literary Agency
Meet our co-agents
DHA deal directly in all other territories not listed above. Please see contents page for the relevant Rights Agent/Executive.
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